C.C. Sabathia won't win this year's National League Cy Young award, and he certainly won't win the NL MVP Award. After all, most players traded midseason relinquish any chance of winning these honors (Manny Ramirez is the other obvious player who may suffer from this fact, but I'll get to him later). Sabathia was traded to the National League on July 7, playing the remaining 79 games of the season with the Milwaukee Brewers. However, during that time, he was undoubtedly the most dominant player in baseball. He went 11-2 with a 1.65 ERA and seven complete games. In fact, he led the league in complete games for the season despite only starting 17 games in the NL. Stats are stats, but he also carried the Milwaukee Brewers into the postseason?not on his shoulders, but on his arm.
Most pitchers these days are too fragile to single-handedly transform a team. But this year, the hefty lefty started his Brewer career with a 9-0 record and then went on to pitch his last three starts of the regular season on three days rest, which he had never done before. During each of these final three starts, Sabathia pitched at least 100 pitches and never let up more than a run?and all this in an era where an ace's arm is the most protected thing in baseball.
And in the very last game of the season, the game that clinched a spot in this year's playoffs, Sabathia pitched a complete game against the best team in the National League. Maybe the Cubs were on cruise control, but that doesn't take away from Sabathia's 122-pitch, four-hit, zero-earned run effort. If the Most Valuable Player Award goes to the person who had the biggest impact on a team's season, which in my mind it should, then how can you not give the big man some serious consideration?
Earlier I mentioned Manny Ramirez, the only other player who made this type of impact on his club. He too was a mid-season acquisition, playing even fewer games for his team than Sabathia did. As you all know, on August 1, the slumping and somewhat lethargic Ramirez punched his ticket to Hollywood in a blockbuster trade that left him playing under long-time Yankee manager Joe Torre in Dodger Blue. Through the first 109 games without Ramirez, the Dodgers were a mediocre one game under .500, three games back in the division. After 53 games with Ramirez, the Dodgers found themselves two games ahead of the D-Backs and six games over .500.
How can one player account for such a turnaround? Maybe it's by having the best numbers in the majors during that 53 game span. His batting average was a massive .396 while driving in 53 runs with 17 home-runs. But maybe even more impressive are his .753 slugging percentage, .489 OBP, and 1.232 OPS. Some people have trouble giving an award to a player that only played a third of the season for a team, but without Ramirez, the Dodgers would have been watching the first games of the playoffs instead of winning Game 1 of the NLDS against the heavily favored Cubs. And just for the record, Ramirez went yard in that game as well.
So who should win this year's NL MVP? Sabathia or Ramirez? If I had to pick, I think I'd go with Ramirez simply because I like seeing him do some damage outside of a Red Sox uniform and as far away as possible from the Bronx. But either way, I think its time we start considering midseason sparkplugs for the MVP. Pujols may have the best numbers in the league, and Howard does lead the league in RBIs and HRs (but also has 199 strikeouts and a miserable .251 BA), but neither one of them played his team into the playoffs quite like Ramirez and Sabathia.
Voters, instead of giving the MVP award to the best player in baseball (as with Alex Rodriguez in 2003 for the Texas Rangers), give it to the player who most fundamentally changed the trajectory of his team, regardless of when he joined the roster.